Current Affairs Quiz - February, 2020

Notes:
‘Martyrs’ Day’ is observed across the country every year on January 30. The day is observed to pay homage to the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and the sacrifices of other Indians who laid down their lives for the country.
This year India observes the 72nd death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. All national leaders including President, Vice President, Prime Minister and the heads of defence services paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi and other martyrs of India. March 23 is also observed as Martyrs’ day to pay tribute to the three freedom fighters -Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev.

Notes:
Veteran diplomat Ajay Bisaria was recently appointed as the next Indian High Commissioner to the North American country, Canada. Ajay Bisaria, who is to assume office shortly, is a 1987-batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer.
Prior to this assignment, Bisaria was serving as India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan. After the special status of Jammu and Kashmir was withdrawn and the state was re-organised, he was returned to India from Pakistan. He is known for taking several initiatives between Indian and Pakistan including the Kartarpur corridor.

Notes:
The Department of Science & Technology (DST), under the Ministry of Science and Technology has launched a scheme called “Sophisticated Analytical & Technical Help Institutes (SATHI)”. It owns high-end analytical testing instruments and reduce the dependency on foreign sources.
DST announced that it has planned to set up five SATHI Centres every year for the next four years. There are already three such institutes in the country at IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi and BHU, at a total cost of Rs.375 Cr. The SATHI Centre will run 24×7 throughout the year and external users from other academic institutes and start-ups will be given more time to use the instruments.

Notes:
The Banker magazine has named the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das as the Central Banker of the Year- Asia-Pacific 2020. ‘Global Central Banker of the Year’ award was presented to Jorgovanka Tabakovi, National Bank of Serbia.
The award is given to central bankers who have significantly managed to stimulate growth and stabilise the economy of their country. Shaktikanta Das was nominated as he successfully managed various economic crises of the country including the Non-Banking Financial companies (NBFC) crisis and Non-performing assets of Indian banks.

Notes:
The famous arts festival called ‘Kala Ghoda Arts Festival’ is celebrated annually in the city of Mumbai. The 21st edition of the street festival has recently commenced. This year, the nine-day-long festival has a variety of events in 12 sections, related to arts, music, cinema, literature, theatre and heritage walks.
This year’s edition of KGAF has been organised entirely through crowd-funding using the platform named ‘Ketto’, without the conventional sponsorship. The annual festival has been organised by the Kala Ghoda Association since 1999.

Notes:
A National Level Rural Technical Festival titled ‘Antahpragnya 2020’ was recently organised in the state of Telangana at Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies-Basar (RGUKT-Basar). This is the country’s biggest technical festival.
The three-day technical fest was conducted with the theme ‘Spot and encourage rural tech innovators’. It hosted more than 200 technical events including Campus Farming competition, Robo Racing, Development of Ideal Villages and National Science Fair. Nearly 50,000 people from nearby places and institutions participated in the event.

Notes:
Top Striker of the Indian Hockey team Navneet Kaur was seen in news recently, as she scored two crucial goals against the host New Zealand and led the country to a 3-0 win in the last game of the five-match tour.
In the tour, India began with a 4-0 win over New Zealand Development squad and two subsequent loses. In the fourth match against Great Britain, the Indian skipper Rani Rampal, who was recently chosen as the ‘World Games Athlete of the year’, scored a goal to lead India to the 1-0 win.

Notes:
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently announced that it has discovered a new natural gas field with 80 trillion standard cubic feet of shallow gas resources. The new gas field was named ‘Jebel Ali gas field’.
The field is located between the territories of Dubai and Abu Dhabi and reported to span around 5,000 square kilometres. This discovery would help the country become more energy independent, and self-sufficient. As of now, the UAE imports natural gas from its neighbouring country Qatar for electricity. The National Oil companies of Dubai and Abu Dhabi are set to further explore the field.

Notes:
Rakhi Halder, the Indian weight-lifter from West Bengal was seen in news recently as she bagged gold medal in 64kg category at the 35th edition of the Senior Women’s National Weightlifting Championships, being held at Kolkata.
Rakhi Halder, who is an Indian Railways employee, had clinched gold in the Commonwealth Championship in June 2019 and the bronze medal at the Qatar International Cup. Earlier, former World champion Mirabai Chanu from Manipur set a new national record in the 49-kg category and won gold medal.

Notes:
Indian President Ramnath Govind recently conferred the International Gandhi Awards for Leprosy on Dr N.S. Dharmashaktu under the Indian nomination (individual) category. Dr N.S. Dharmashaktu was the former Principal adviser (Public health), Ministry of Health and family welfare.
The Leprosy Mission Trust was presented the award under the institutional category. The President also announced that India has accomplished the level of leprosy elimination which is defined as less than one case per ten thousand population.